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by Amalspach



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Eventual Romance, F/M, Happy Ending, Slow Build, after Russia, benny is a cowboy wannabe change my mind, jolene and beth friendship is neat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:40:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28410279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amalspach/pseuds/Amalspach
Summary: "'What are you doing here?' 'You're a champion,' he tells her, blunt and correct as ever. 'You need company.'"Or, Beth comes home from Russia to find a familiar face waiting on her doorstep. She may or may not have feelings about it. (Oneshot)
Relationships: Beth Harmon & Benny Watts, Beth Harmon & Jolene, Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Comments: 22
Kudos: 308
Collections: bookmarks





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**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Queen's Gambit or any of the characters. I only lay claim to the plot.
> 
> Also I've had issues recently with plagiarism on one of my other stories recently. I just want to say that anything I publish on fanfiction.net or on my official AO3 account are entirely mine unless explicitly stated otherwise. I am only a co-author on certain chapters of a friend's fiction, and you can find that story on AO3. So yes, if you see anything I've written anywhere but on my two personal accounts, it's not me. Please tell me if you see any stolen stories.
> 
> Additionally, this was written over the course of six hours so word choice is probably a bit less diverse than usual. Oh well.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and hope you enjoy.

He doesn't wait, which she really should have expected. He is not patient, this man, nor is he idle. Benny is a human of action, and when presented with a problem, he attacks it with a cold-cut and logical precision; rook takes bishop, knight takes pawn, and checkmate. His apartment hosts the essentials of life, stripped of frivolities. His conversations are carefully weighed and don't waste words.

However, it goes further. When Beth needs a support base, he scrimps and sacrifices and assembles a motley crew of allies. He will drill her on moves and motions for hours on end, putting aside all but her tutelage. During her drunken episodes, he scowls and bitches and cuts the hangover like a knife, providing aspirin and pulling back her hair.

This is Benny Watts in a nutshell. Not patient, no, but a thinker. He is ruthless, but he has morals. He is rough around the edges, but he has always made room for kindness, and occasionally something resembling gentility. He is not a saint - no one with pants that tight could be - but he is a good man.

Beth Harmon returns from Russia high off the scent of victory. It smells of a musty room and a freshly wiped chess board, of foreign sweat and sweet saline tears, of Alma's old perfume and of a crisp cold evening and of a pressed white suit. It clings, this smell, and it consumes all of the senses. She can't see anything but patterns lining up in concert, can't hear anything but the low and steady thrum of blood in her ears.

She is the best in the world, and everyone knows it. She will be in books, in movies, on radio stations and magazine covers. Most importantly, people showed up, and the ones who see her will surely look in her eyes and see the victory, taste the smell of it on their tongues like the coppery tinge of coins rolled around one's pockets. It's contagious, that metallic touch. It floats off the skin, the very feeling of it all.

Benny called, and thus he obviously doesn't hate her, and Beth wants to spread the wings of victory to the one person who will truly understand and appreciate it the way she can. Benny lives at her convenience; he exists in her mind as a perpetual glorious pain-in-the-ass, sitting in a folding chair with jangling necklaces and a crooked smile. The hat is optional, but often present in her approximations. She estimates throughout the day, weighing the possibilities of the more-or-less habitual actions of her partner in crime. Is he wearing the kimono, skinny ribs jutting out the sides? Is he reading the paper again, skimming through the political segments with disinterested scoffs? It's all probable, and maybe her mind believes that in some place and time, he exists as all of the impossible, charming versions of himself, drudging through all of the random things that compose a life simultaneously. He'll always be a phone call away, waiting to come back through an open door, no matter how beaten down or hurt he's feeling. Even if he does hate her still, which he doesn't; he can't.

This is why it is surprising to find an empty apartment when she drops in following the crush of the airport. Beth Harmon drags two stuffed expensive suitcases down the nastiest set of stairs she'd ever seen just to be slapped in the face by the realization of his absence. No trench coat on the hook, no shirts in the closet, no black boots unlaced in a puddle at the door. No eggs in the fridge or books thrown on the couch - yes, couch, which is new.

The bed is made, but the sheets still smell like him.

She can't imagine where he can be. Beth hopes it doesn't look like Denver.

She may never get the chance to say thank you, if the clearing out of his travel case and the absence of his chess set are any indication of a long trip. She may never get the chance to say anything at all, and the finality of that - knowing that maybe a congratulations and a cheering section are all she may have gotten out of him - do something funny to the carotid. It squeezes in all the right places, and suddenly she's frowning, the smell of victory evaporating in this pathetic excuse for an apartment. The high wears off, the weariness sinks in.

Still, she is Beth Harmon, and she is best known for surviving and strengthening when presented with the worst. So she straightens her snowy jacket lapels, collects her things, and walks back up his ghastly crime scene stairway with confident steps, ignoring the suspicious sinking sensation rattling against her ribcage, and she boards another plane. She hitches a ride back into Lexington proper and stares out the window because she wants to, and because she can. Lexington resembles home, in the vaguest possible sense. She loves it because it is where she first found herself, and where she first found a place to call her own and plant her feet firm. She loves it for its familiarity, and occasionally for its people.

Beth Harmon's second surprise of the day comes, once again, associated inextricably with Benny Watts. He plays with the edges of his hat, foot taping an inaudible beat into her front steps. Sleep rims his eyes, pleads for him to surrender, but he doesn't; his corneas are sharp as ever, analyzing. They catch fire when she flings open the car door, bags in hand.

"Beth Harmon," he says, like it's some sort of prayer. He drops the name at her feet, a title imbued with too much feeling for just two simple syllables, and she thinks that it has to mean something more, maybe in another language she hasn't yet learned.

"What are you doing here?" she blurts out, and although she can't grasp why, the fatigue is gone, replaced by something infinitely softer at the corners. _I've missed you_ , she means to reply, _I'm sorry, and I've missed you, and I wish that you could have seen it all, from the win to Jolene to the pit of my spiral. I missed you even in the worst of it, and I didn't think it would hurt so much. I'm not much good at missing people, but I missed you like an ache. I don't know why, but now you're back, and 'I missed you' isn't enough for all of it. Not by a long shot._

Beth holds her tongue. Never touch a piece before you are certain of your move.

"You're a champion," he tells her, blunt and correct as ever. "You need company," he continues, and for that alone - for emptying the apartment, for showing up unannounced - Beth is tempted to throw him off her porch by the bootstraps and into someone else's yard. Benny can be another sad soul's poltergeist. And then, he picks up her suitcase and takes it to the door. He produces her key from under a rock in the yard and unlocks the house, the easiest thing in the world, and it occurs to her that yes, she already mentioned the spare key to him several months ago. Benny is no idiot, and he could let himself in if he wanted to.

He was waiting for her.

Benny Watts, this impatient, clever, pretty bastard, was waiting.

"Welcome home, Beth," the cowboy gestures, holding the door, and without consciously thinking about it she walks inside after him. He says what she's been repeating ad nauseum: "I missed you."

"Me too," she responds, and his smile is relieved. A rare, genuine thing of beauty.

"I'm going to stay for a bit," he informs her, although it's hedged as a question. Benny, who is so naturally unsinkable, is asking for permission. It's impossible.

Because he's Benny, and because he asks, Beth Harmon does the inconceivable.

"Okay."

Just like that, he is in.

* * *

Benny Watts unpacks.

"Nice place you've got here," he says, and she snorts.

"It's got color," she responds, "and windows. It's a palace."

Benny shoves her shoulder gently, smiling. He's dying to sleep, but he's there. Solid, despite looking like he might fall over in a strong breeze. She could ruffle his hair, if she wanted to. Steal his coat and kiss him, just to see if it feels the same - all electricity and softness, ferocity and fondness. She didn't realize how much she needed to know until he was standing in front of her, having driven all night after hearing about her return.

It's the sort of act that means something, isn't it? They should really talk about it, starting with the fact that a note or another call would have been helpful.

And yet, she is used to playing the long game, so Beth leaves him in her guest bedroom with a hug that lasts a second too long. She should really help him with his things, or maybe settle for a sharp slap. Instead she goes to her own bedroom and tries to sleep, her head clouding with visions of Russia and winning and a man on her porch, waiting so diligently. It's a curious amalgamation. All of it is too much, too fast.

Fuck, if only drinking would help.

But then, she doesn't want a drink. It's a temporary fix, and it never lands her anywhere worthwhile. For Jolene, and for herself, she refrains. She is enough, with or without liquor. She refuses to hurt everyone she knows again.

"Good morning, Beth," is the first thing she hears the next morning when she traipses downstairs, stretching in a silk nightgown. Once again, he is shirtless. Forever the tease of the two of them. "Scrambled," Benny announced unprovoked, "but I couldn't find any bacon. I'm surprised, given how you go through it."

"I haven't exactly had time to shop," she defends, which is completely fair. Coming back overseas from the win of a lifetime has to earn you some slack.

"There's always time for bacon." He shakes his head as he plates her eggs, still sizzling on the porcelain. "What's the plan for today?" For a moment, she gazes blankly at the food, and at him, as if both were unreal. Benny so rarely cooks for anyone other than himself, and here he is, making himself comfortable in her kitchen, rooting through her cutlery like he belongs. A perfectly normal occurrence.

"Groceries," Beth finds it within herself to reply, "and then television. Chess, if there's time and I'm still awake."

"There's always time for chess," he promises, and you would never assume that he's a genius by the way he picks through his eggs, barefoot and bare chested. Sunlight catches on his back, streaming down his sides.

"Maybe I'll skip the programs," she amends, picking up her fork.

* * *

In addition to chess, they utilize the living room television every night. Previously, it was Alma's treasure, and though Beth only really sat for shows when her mother was there, as it turns out the secret to enjoying a cheesy special is company.

Jolene would be laughing her ass off, like the good friend she is.

"Beth, much as I love basking in your presence," Benny says, and she preemptively rolls her eyes. "As someone who has never owned a television, I don't know what the point of this is."

"To nitpick, mostly," she grins, looking up at him as technicolor splashes her pale face, "Occasionally to enjoy the show. Sitcoms are supposed to be fun."

"Supposed to be?" he echoes, raising an eyebrow.

"Again, occasionally."

"Of course," her companion shakes his head. "There's nothing like _I Love Lucy_ to bring a crowd together." He's incorrigible. She's a menace. They make it work.

When she's on the brink of falling asleep, he carries her back upstairs.

"You're heavy, Beth," he complains, readjusting her as they go.

"At least I don't disappear when I turn sideways," she snorts, delirious.

"How dare you," he intones without malice, but he still tucks her in before returning to his own bed. That's how she knows he never means it.

* * *

"If I'm going to be living here," Benny states, scratching the back of his neck, "I've got to contribute." Beth finishes her chapter as she sits on her couch, leisurely stretching.

"You're broke," she hums, fingering the thick paper and flicking the pages. "You're still paying rent in New York, right?"

"No electric or water bills," the man reminds her. "Rent on the apartment is dirt cheap without the utilities."

"Oh," she comments, mentally running quick calculations. Was this some attempt to cement his position here? Possibly, but he already cooked far better than she did, and frankly the company was enough to justify his presence. Moving in and taking on household responsibilities seemed like an awful relationship-like maneuver. But then, he was retaining the apartment on the east coast. Why do that, then, if the intention was cementing?

Maybe this is a temporary arrangement, then, and he's treating the house as a renting situation. Perhaps they lack transactions, but her home is nice, and it's beyond what one would get from a hotel stay. He is simply assuring that the bill will not come due in the future. It's all perfectly explainable.

"What were you thinking?" she asks, setting down her novel with a faux sigh. She'd read it before; repeating old history was trite at times, and exhausting at others.

"I can do some basic chores," Benny shrugs. "Helping more with dishes, dusting occasionally. Making life marginally more bearable."

"You want to do my dishes," she repeats, incredulous.

"Don't sound so shocked."

"You," the redhead starts again, "want to do my dishes."

He flushes, and Beth Harmon can count on one hand the number of times she's been able to fluster Benny Watts. But of all the things to confound the poor man, dishes have never crossed her mind.

"What's so strange about wanting to contribute when I'm living in your house?" Defensive, if she's ever seen him. Beth curls her lips into a smirk.

"Look who's gone and gotten domestic," she chides from her seat, rising to pat his cheek in a mildly patronizing manner. "I never thought I'd see the day." In a swift movement, he catches her hand, flattens it against his face again. His eyelids close, and Beth's at a momentary loss. She heats all over, feels her pulse pick itself up into a more rapid pace.

Careless, so damn _careless_. She's Borgov's better, and she lets her untrained heart run wild around a boy. It only takes a hand, and she's queued. It's almost pathetic.

Still, she wants him to draw her closer, betray the slightest hint of more. Right now, she would like to be wanted.

"Beth," he says instead, finally opening his eyes and releasing her fingers, "I would be honored to wash the dishes of a world champion." He grins down at her, but it doesn't reach his eyes. They're too hungry.

"You start tonight," she warns, trying to draw her mouth into a straight, impassive line. Always so eager to get in the last word, isn't she? And yet she lays back on the couch and lays her hand against her breastbone, burning.

As it turns out, letting Benny do dishes is a recipe for disaster.

"Who taught you to leave half the sink filled with soapy water?" he scowls, mildly disgusted. "It's better to rinse everything in a clear sink, then scrub with soap. Otherwise the water becomes a crud bath."

"This is how Alma always did it," she defends, and though Beth Harmon is not one to pout, she feels it's justified here. "My method works fine."

"Not anymore," Benny tells her without room for dissent. He strips himself of his shirt - a black turtleneck - and releases all the water, taking every plate by hand. "I bet you just dipped them in and assumed they were clean, you monster."

"Well," she says. No justification is forthcoming.

"Christ, Beth," he says, voice laced in mild disappointment. "What did you do without me?"

"I drank. Did drugs." She's blunt, but when is she not? "Mostly, I suffocated from the boredom."

"I promise you, there will never be another dull moment," he scoffs. Beth looks at him, this lanky tree of a man. No hat, no shirt, but the boots remain, as do the collection of necklaces. He's the sort of person Alma might appraise as too slight, too ill-defined, too pale. Beth finds that she can't agree with the preferences of her mother; Benny looks good in her kitchen when night sets in, brow furrowed in concentration as he works over a butter knife. So strange to see, and yet he belongs.

With Harry, it was never like this. With him, she is hit by the sudden need to put her arms around him, watch the spectacle of it all. For once, she indulges.

"See how much better this works when you're -" Benny is saying, but the words die in his throat when Beth wraps her hands in firm circles around his midriff, tucks her face over his shoulder. He stiffens, but melts like butter seconds later, subtly, falling back into her embrace.

She hums, he finishes rinsing something new. Bare skin on skin incites a live wire, and it's a cold night. She would have liked to steal this warmth in Russia.

"Beth?" he finally says after several long, lazy minutes.

"Yes?"

"Do you still like my hair?" It's so faint, this question. So fragile, his voice. Beth had never imagined that Benny could be tentative, or even the slightest bit insecure. It's inconceivable.

Something flutters against her ribcage, and it refuses to be smothered.

"I," she begins, opening and closing her mouth. _Always_ is stuck to the tips of her teeth. Nothing is harder to grind out than the truth. "What's not to like?" she settles on, and it still comes out too raw, too exposed. No good chess player tips their hand. She's clearly got much to learn about the world.

"Good," Benny tells her, throat inexplicably hoarse, and he turns around and moves her hands from his waist to his neck. _Finally_ , she thinks privately. When he kisses her, it isn't the rushed and furious first they shared in his basement, where everything was arousal and excitement. It's slow and languid, like sitting by a fireplace and seeping in its heat. Passionate, yes, but smooth, placing a bubble around the outside world.

Beth comes away tingling, her digits still knotted around her neck. He rests his forehead on hers, panting, whole body dipped towards her smaller one. His very talented hands have made their way to her hips.

"That," he tells her, "is what I've been waiting to do this entire trip." Beth wants to reciprocate, wants to ask what this means.

She has never been good at asking someone to stay, and she is ill prepared to do so. And yet, no one makes her insides squirm quite like Benny does, and maybe he should know. In case he feels amenable to kissing her again, perhaps.

Benny does not give her time to respond. He drops a kiss to her forehead and retreats upstairs, red in the face.

"Good night, Beth," he calls from the top of the landing, going into his room.

Beth touches feathered fingertips to her lips, turning beetroot.

* * *

Initially, she assumes he'd come to regret kissing her. This is substantiated by the very human observation that people rarely flee when they've done something they are proud of. This is why she tends to retreat when confronted with her own shortcomings.

However, they watch television and he puts an arm around her. They go to dinner and his feet link with hers. He shows her the basics of piano on Alma's personal instrument and it begins with fingers on fingers and a small bench space, ending with forgotten sheet music and what can only be classified as a very intense makeout session. Weren't the days of intense tongue and touching left for high schoolers behind bleachers? Because while Beth never experienced it, she imagines the sense of fierce immediacy has to be iconic teenager.

So not embarrassed, then. Clearly he's not regretting his initiation.

What is this? What would it be called?

As he grabs her from behind while she studies a brilliant chess game - Reti vs Alekhine, 1925 - and says, "I can help recreate the opening," she finds she doesn't much care for analysis.

* * *

Jolene meets Benny at the house during luncheon, which is a clash of two titans. Both eye Beth with a slightly claiming gaze whenever she isn't looking, which is rather annoying. She is not something to be marked and kept. She has always been her own person.

This knowledge doesn't deter them.

"So you were the one who she slept with in the city," Jolene says, unimpressed. "I thought you'd be bigger."

"The long-lost best friend," Benny laughs dryly. "Where have you been for the past decade?"

"Play nice," Beth warns, although it's amusing, seeing the two most unsinkable, stubborn mules of human beings collide. The fallout, while tedious to deal with, would surely be hilarious.

As time passes during Jolene's afternoon visit, the ribs about sore losers (all Jolene's doing) and the subtle pokes on gold-diggers (Benny's fault entirely) give way to a genuine, albeit banter-ridden, conversation. The wannabe cowboy takes Beth's hand under the table without consciously seeking it out. They've become casual, haven't they? This unspoken thing that they've cultivated is really making its way into overt territory. However, that's an issue for another day.

Jolene notices, because she is a damn hawk when she tries to be and her lawyering skills depend on a base level of observance. She raises an eyebrow, and Beth mouths back 'don't ask'. Benny fails to notice, being too consumed by his own monologue.

"It was good to meet you," Benny concludes lunch with, giving Jolene a handshake. "Hope to see you again." She takes it with a smirk.

"I have a sneaking suspicion I'll be seeing you around," she snarks, and with that Beth rolls her eyes. The redhead does not blush, as that would be contrived and immature. As he wanders back into the kitchen, the visitor hugs her oldest friend. "Since when are you two together? You have to tell me these things."

"I don't know what's going on," Beth admits, attempting to seem more authoritative in that reply than she feels. Against Jolene, it is unsuccessful.

"Lord have mercy," the dark skinned woman groans, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"Look, it doesn't need to be figured out right now. I think I'm actually happy."

"What's there to figure out?" her companion says. "You should see the way he looks at you."

"And how is that?"

Jolene looks her up and down, and Beth gets the distinct impression that she's said something inescapably stupid. "He looks at you like he's in love, Beth. And you look at him the same way." She gets in her car, closing the door with a resounding clang. "Good luck, Cracker."

* * *

Beth Harmon is not familiar with love. It has not been kind to her, and as a result she turns up her nose at the general notion of it. Her mother's love was a jagged, unpredictable thing, and it sliced Beth into ribbons. Alma was the closest to a surrogate parent Beth could find, despite her flaws, and yet unexpected death has a tendency to rip one in two irregardless of circumstances. Shaibell, that brilliant man, was never seen again once she'd left the orphanage, and for the longest time, Jolene was lost to memory. If there is anything Beth Harmon has gathered about love, it is that it bleeds. It stings. It struggles against all rationale and does not yield into something soft and sweet. Love is pain.

A life without love - and especially romance - is pointless, so many people insist, but love in its suburban form seems to consist of settling down with a nice, boring man and having nice, boring children and working a nice, boring job. Beth has tried; she cannot make herself smaller or duller in order to become it, cannot force herself to commit to Harry despite appreciating his relentless friendship. She loves the idea of Townes, a man who takes care of her and respects her despite her barbs, but finds she has never fallen for the man himself. No man has ever made Beth feel like love, the kind so often searched for and coveted, could be possible for her. That is, with one exception.

Benny is not a bland all-American man, the type expecting the picket fence and three children. What he expects from Beth is her respect, her time, her attention, and her work returned in equal measure. He expects her to give her all to whatever she dares to reach for, and he expects her to hold him accountable for his own failings. He expects her to be messy, to be inconvenient and mean and aloof, but he expects her to come back home and lean on him. He expects nothing but the best of her, every single day, and she realizes that the very fact that he does so has made her a better person. There is a man who sees her talent and her dedication and her drive and who encourages improvement and pursuit. He looks at her many mistakes and finds a woman worth supporting. He is not coddling, and yet Benny is impossibly warm. Being around him is effortless, and he understands her mind like no one else. Even the basic drudgery of life, like eating breakfast and washing dishes, is simply improved with a partner.

She loves having him around. She loves the lightness it brings. She loves feeling safe with him, having the house shrink into something more intimate.

It's unruly, this thing in her chest. She's been taught that love is precipitous and fragile, and this is different. Beth Harmon does not do things in halves. She takes what she wants when she wants it, a creature of domination. So this can't be it, then, because it's a lot stronger than sweaty palms and nervous first date giggles. It's nothing like what schoolgirl gossip has prepared her for.

Then again, neither was sex. It was infinitely better.

"Beth," Benny calls, as if realizing he was on her mind. "You're spacing."

"Hmm?" she replies, threading a hand through her locks. Short, easy to play with at the ends. She'd been staring, hadn't she? At him and his stupid hair. "Just got a bit preoccupied."

"What with?"

"Endings," she answers, and technically it's not a lie.

"Want to go over the board with a fresh set of eyes?" he offers, and he comes to sit across from her, bringing a chess set. He already knows what she's going to say, is already setting up a game for two. Much as she claims the opposite, Beth despises being alone. It's when she's wrapped up in her own thoughts that she most needs company.

Benny knows. Benny always knows.

He holds out two closed fists, and she taps his right hand. White it is, then.

(They play, and when she wins, no one is holding their breath. When he wins at speed chess afterwards, he smiles and laughs and something sparks in the back of his eyes.

"Sometimes, I've still got it," Benny Watts tells her, and in this case, losing doesn't feel like a loss. It still smells like victory. She smiles without thought.

 _Oh,_ she thinks to herself as she drinks it in, _So this is what it's supposed to feel like._

For the first time in her life, Beth Harmon thinks she might be in love.)

* * *

"I'm broke for a reason," he says, his hat slipping low on his brow. They are outside, staring off her porch and into nighttime suburbia, at people down the hill living normal lives. How is it, not playing on invisible chessboards? Not constantly preparing for another match, not putting up with endless travel and hotel bookings? Before, Beth assumed that they must have such small, tired existences. In a world full of average, she was proof of the extraordinary.

Now she knows that the extraordinary can be found in even the most unsuspecting of people and places. Alma is a great example. Living with Benny has proved to be another.

Broke for a reason, though. She quirks her head and nudges his shoulder. "What's the reason?"

"I was independent by fourteen," he responds with, and his faint mustache quivers despite his despondent tone. "It's not the sort of life I'd wish on anyone, out on the streets. The chess money let me survive alright, so long as it was given in cash increments, and when I was eighteen things got much better. I had access to bank accounts that you can't get your hands on when you're a homeless minor." She takes his hand into hers, squeezes it gently. Benny inhales, exhales. Eventually, he squeezes back. "I've seen things in New York City. The kind of things that make you want to carry a knife wherever you go. And still, it was better than going home. Believe me when I say, as terrible as it sounds, I wish I was an orphan, too."

"I get it," she replies, because she does. She looks at her own mother and tries to envision her alive and well. She comes up short every time; some people, much as you love them, are complicated. They were never meant to be parents, and maybe they're better seen as ghosts sustaining themselves off of fond memorabilia.

"I hired a private eye when I was nineteen," he tells her, swallowing. "I had a little sister, and I couldn't take her with me. I put everything into it, a whole team of them. And when they found her a few years later, they told me she had been married. She had a baby." He stares at his shoes, fixes his sight on their scuffs. "They also told me she'd been dead by two months. Just got sick suddenly and left behind this stranger and a child. I saw the gravestone myself, and I tried to talk to them, but I just . . . they were _there_ , and I hadn't been for years. It didn't seem fair. So I left a check for five thousand, which wiped out basically everything but living expenses, and I went back home."

"You couldn't have known."

"Would it have been different if I'd stayed?" he asks, quietly. "That question, it keeps me up some nights. I know, if I had, our father would have taken all the prize money and wasted it on beer, but if I had struggled for another few years, maybe she could have come with."

"It sounds to me like she got out herself," Beth comments, smoothing her palm across his back. "And she got married and had a kid, right? They cared enough about her to get a stone engraved. Were there flowers?"

"Yes," he says, and she doesn't think she's ever seen Benny Watts cry. "She liked dahlias. She probably wanted them for the wedding, too."

"I imagine she was loved a lot," the chess queen surmises, "and that before the end, she'd been happy. So don't blame yourself, not when she was able to fix her problems on her own. It seems like she'd be proud of the way she lived." He kisses her, then. Benny tastes like salt and sadness, and she hopes that this can make it better, in some minute way.

She realizes she's never really talked about Alma expansively, has she? Well, if he's going to be tearing up, Beth might as well join him.

"My adoptive mother died at one of my chess competitions," she starts, and the night ends with two people looking up at the stars, marveling at the fact that they are the living.

* * *

"Where's the hydrogen peroxide again?" Benny calls from the bottom of the stairwell. Beth finds this to be a rather curious request, so she finishes slipping on her skirt for the day and reappears over the railing.

"Why do you -" She's stopped abruptly by the fact that he's bleeding profusely, red spreading down his arm in a ghastly network of strings. "What the hell did you _do_?"

"Some drunk left a trail of broken bottles down the front lawn. Three houses in a row, and lots of glass all over the pavement. I figured I should pick it up."

"You're an idiot," she concludes, worrying her lip. "Damn it, it might be in the laundry. Or no, in the second floor cupboard."

"I'll wait," he says, so nonchalant. She would like to stab him with something rather blunt, like a rusty spoon, but then he'd still have the bleeding issue, so. Beth refrains, despite the fact that he so clearly deserves it. Chess prodigy, her ass.

"You are such a pain," she lets him know as she produces disinfectant and gauze. She drags him to the bathroom, rinsing his arm and bandaging as best she can.

"Takes one to know one, Beth," he winks, and she's sorely tempted to push down, directly into the open wound.

"You're not cute."

"You thought I was before?"

"I never said that," she warns, eyes narrowing.

"I'm sure you've thought about it. After all, you do like my hair." He grins, lopsided and teasing, and she rolls her eyes, resigning herself again to the fact that, of all the men (and women, on occasion) she had to choose from, this was apparently the one she went for. This human train wreck in too tight pants.

"All I'm going to say is, you're very lucky I love you," she huffs, tying off the gauze. "Well? Good as new?" Benny, as it happens, has become a statue. "Are you having a stroke?"

"Beth," he responds tightly, face unreadable, "did you just say you loved me?"

Oh. _Oh._

Fuck.

"Love can mean many different things -"

"But you meant _love_ , didn't you?" he says lowly, trapping her between the sink and his chest. As he leaned over to look her in the eyes, she was struck by the absentminded thought that this would be a very good opportunity to kiss him. Her own mind was massively unhelpful.

"So what if I did?" she decides to go with, because there's no real point in denying it now. Jolene would have a fit. "Does that mean you want to leave, or -"

" _Fuck_ , Beth," he replies, letting loose an almost hysterical laugh, "I love you too." It devolves very quickly from there. He crushes his lips to hers and she runs hands under his shirt and then clothing disappears at a terminal speed. (Goodbye, respectable blouse and swishy skirt. You will not be missed.) Needless to say, her bed finally gains a new addition.

After, he traces freckles on her arms, playing a new game.

"Not going to start talking about chess maneuvers?" she asks, and though it's a joke, it's also very much a question.

"It's the only thing I do well under pressure," he responds, fingers still roaming. "I don't think you realize how nervous I was. I thought I was going to die."

"You've slept with girls before."

"None that I really cared about," Benny says through long lashes, a half smile creasing his face. "There's a reason the 'no sex' rule was a rule."

"Was it any different?"

"Much, much better."

She hums, mostly to herself. "I agree."

"Really?"

"Don't get a big head." He smirks, and she shoves his face. It does little to deter him. "Does this mean you're staying?" It just falls from her tongue, not really a sentence. Not a fully-formed concept yet.

Before she can truly panic, he searches her eyes in a way that makes her want to run and hide. But she doesn't, because she's an adult, and because apparently he loves her. So she will be mature and decide to let him see what he wants.

"Yeah, I think I am. Staying, I mean."

She sits up abruptly. "No going back to New York?"

"What's waiting in the city? You've seen my apartment."

"It's a pathetic excuse for an apartment," she agrees, and just like that, the smile is back. "You're moving in?"

"Beth, I've been moved in for almost eight months. I think we're a bit past due."

"I guess that's true," she admits. "I just didn't -"

"I didn't know if I was, either," he says, and she can appreciate that about him. How he always speaks his mind. "But I knew I was twisted up inside when you left for Russia, and I had to keep myself from calling while you were back home. And I figured that life's too short to wait on someone like you."

"I hate that you're charming," she sighs into his shoulder. "You really messed up my plans to die alone."

"Right back at you, Harmon."

She loves him. He loves her. And everything is alright.

It's not so much that they live happily ever after, and it's more that they live.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I know I've been gone for a bit, but I never wrote anything for Christmas and I just finished the Queen's Gambit. It's really good, and after obsessively combing through fanfiction I had to write a drabble of my own.
> 
> Over the course of the last two nights, this clearly grew past a drabble. Oops.
> 
> Anyways, thank you again for reading. Leave all the comments and favorites you want - I always appreciate them, and I get really unnecessarily excited when I see people reacting to things I've written. It's been difficult to find inspiration for my actual writing recently, and seeing positive feedback always helps. Have a great day!


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